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Dr Brian Meonch writes: “So far one million people from around the world have already died from Chernobyl radiation, including over 110,000 of the original 830,000 clean up workers”. How fatal will Fukushima be?
Chernobyl’s poisonous legacy lives on
Several days prior to Japan’s nuclear disaster, in a stroke of prophetic timing, former Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev published his lessons learned from Chernobyl. He calls the Chernobyl accident “a shocking reminder of the reality of the nuclear threat”. The nuclear power industry survives through secrecy and deceit, he wrote, having kept private “some 150 significant radiation leaks at nuclear power stations over the world”.
The Fukushima catastrophe has now officially been designated the same level of threat as the signature nuclear catastrophe of Chernobyl in 1986. For anyone who has bought into the “deceit” as Gorbachev called it and believed the official line that only dozens of people were killed at Chernobyl and a few thousand easily treated cases of thyroid cancer were the only health consequences, another recently published book should be required reading right after Gorbachev’s work.
Written by Russian and Belarus experts, edited and published by the New York Academy of Sciences, the book, “Chernobyl : Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment” is by far the most well researched book on the issue. Drawing from over 5,000 published articles and studies, the authors arrive at startling conclusions. Among them:
So far, one million people from around the world have already died from Chernobyl radiation, including over 110,000 of the original 830,000 clean up workers. High doses of radioactive fallout reached much of Europe and the UK. 750 million people in the Northern Hemisphere received significant contamination. The release was 200 times more radiation than previously thought, hundreds of times more than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The authors stated:
“There is a danger greater than nuclear weapons concealed within nuclear power. No citizen of any country can be assured that he or she can be protected from radioactive contamination. One nuclear reactor can pollute half the globe. Chernobyl fallout covers the entire Northern Hemisphere.”
The percentage of healthy children born in Belarus, the Ukraine and European Russia fell from 80% to less than 20% after the 1986 accident. The health consequences include increased fetal and infant deaths, birth defects, diseases of every organ system, cancers and non-cancerous tumors. Photographs of the tumors and birth defects are frightening.
Bird populations in California plummeted a month after Chernobyl and there is no other plausible explanation. Other species still show marked contamination: livestock, birds, fish, plants and trees. Grazing sheep in the UK, 2000 miles away, still have high levels of radioactive Cesium 137. Over 1,000 square miles in the Ukraine still contain enough radioactivity to prohibit human habitation for hundreds of years.
Last year, Ukraine’s president warned that the reactor ruins remain a serious threat. Most of Chernobyl’s radioactivity is still in those ruins which are encased in a rapidly deteriorating concrete shell vulnerable to collapse. Urgent work to construct a giant steel coffin over it is far behind schedule and the Ukraine is asking–begging really–for financial help to complete the project.
It is common rhetoric that new reactors are much better designed–a half truth at best. In 1986 Chernobyl 4 was state of the art and its lid was stronger than domes covering some plants in the US. Soviet engineers pronounced it melt down proof, and that even if the worst happened, the lid would hold. Because of their older design, a melt down in many US reactors would release far more radiation than Chernobyl. Numerous close calls have occurred among the aging US reactors in addition to our own Three Mile Island accident. High cancer and infant mortality rates in Pennsylvania, especially Dauphin County, defy the common belief that no one died at Three Mile Island.
At least new nukes are safe, right? The Nuclear Regulatory Commission ruled the flagship of new designs, the Toshiba-Westinghouse AP-1000, unable to withstand earthquakes, hurricanes or tornadoes, and has a critical flaw that could cause it to explode. We should have learned by now that extreme scientific endeavors are high risk. Several deep water oil drilling catastrophes, two space shuttle explosions, three nuclear melt downs and multiple nuclear near misses certainly illustrate the point.
Even without accidents and earth quakes nuclear power is a public health hazard. Every phase of the nuclear fuel cycle–the mining, milling, processing, routine power plant operations, waste transportation and storage–releases a steady stream of radioactivity into our environment.
New clean, safe, nuclear power?
There is no such thing as a “safe” amount of radiation exposure. Even small increases in radiation exposure increases everyone’s risk slightly. When hundreds of millions of people have their health risks increased slightly, even in a best case scenario there will be thousands of victims, which by definition is a public health disaster. But Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and now Fukushima and Daiichi teaches us that the nuclear industry’s history, like the oil industry’s, was never close to best case scenario and there certainly is no reason to believe their future will be either.
Albert Einstein said, “The splitting of the atom changed everything, save man’s mode of thinking; thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe.” I wonder if Einstein qualifies as a sufficiently authoritative voice to silence the undaunted nuclear cheerleaders.
(This story was originally published in Truth Out on April 5, 2011 under the title ‘Bury the Nuclear Renaissance Once and for All’ and has been republished with permission. This version has been newly updated by the author for Independent Australia to better reflect the current situation at Fukushima.)
See Brian Moench speak about air pollution:
16 Comments
An absolutely factless, bullshit article. Believe it if you wish.
It seems Independent Australia has veered off down the road of bog standard leftist, socialist claptrap and will publish anything that fits that world view.
Perhaps I should give an example of why this article is factless.
“There is no such thing as a “safe” amount of radiation exposure. Even small increases in radiation exposure increases everyone’s risk slightly.”
Ever eaten a banana? Slept next to your spouse (or significant other, for those less traditional)? You have been exposed to small increases in radiation exposure that you would not have had if you had not eaten a banana or slept next to someone else.
Need I go on? Like to say radiation is actually very normal in everybody’s everyday life? And that some people get more than others … naturally?
You must have missed the reference to the National Academy of Sciences book on the Chernobyl disaster, Sneer. That’s a peer reviewed body that has been around since 1866. And the author IS a medical doctor. Are you a medical doctor, Sneer?
Colin – Why on earth should anyone pay more attention to your rant above than to the book cited in the article?
From the NYAS website home page: “The Academy is committed to publishing content deemed scientifically valid by the general scientific community, from whom the Academy carefully monitors feedback.”
RT @DrHCaldicott: Chernobyl cover-up: study shows more than a million deaths from radiation http://t.co/slVJkFa
Colin,
‘Bananas’ don’t kill a million people.
You are dead right Charles, bananas don’t kill a million people. Neither did Chernobyl. Closer to 60-70, tops from the UN investigation. We know their names.
Just because some idiot writes that a million people have died doesn’t mean radiation caused them. What are their names?
But, Charles, do you dispute that eating a banana gives a person an increased dose of RADIATION? And your heroes tell us there is NO SAFE EXPOSURE LEVEL. Put the two together and … PANIC … RUN FOR YOUR LIVES … KILLER BANANAS ON THE LOSE.
Simple denial of the content or ad hominem attacks on the authors is not credible in this case as the paper was published by The National Academy of Sciences, which is one of the world’s foremost and most distinguished scientific bodies. They only print credible peer reviewed scientific papers.
http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ABOUT_main_page
“The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is an honorific society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare.
“The NAS was established by an Act of Congress that was signed by President Abraham Lincoln on March 3, 1863, at the height of the Civil War, which calls upon the NAS to “investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art” whenever called upon to do so by any department of the government. Scientific issues would become more complex in the years following the war, and to expand the expertise available to it in its advisory service to the government, the NAS created the National Research Council under its charter in 1916. To keep pace with the growing roles that science and technology would play in public life, the National Academy of Engineering was established under the NAS charter in 1964, and the Institute of Medicine followed in 1970.
“Since 1863, the nation’s leaders have turned to these non-profit organizations for advice on the scientific and technological issues that frequently pervade policy decisions. Most of the institution’s science policy and technical work is conducted by its operating arm, the National Research Council (NRC), which was created expressly for this purpose and which provides a public service by working outside the framework of government to ensure independent advice on matters of science, technology, and medicine. The NRC enlists committees of the nation’s top scientists, engineers, and other experts, all of whom volunteer their time to study specific concerns. The results of their deliberations have inspired some of America’s most significant and lasting efforts to improve the health, education, and welfare of the population. The Academy’s service to government has become so essential that Congress and the White House have issued legislation and executive orders over the years that reaffirm its unique role.
“The Academy membership is composed of approximately 2,100 members and 380 foreign associates, of whom nearly 200 have won Nobel Prizes. Members and foreign associates of the Academy are elected in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research; election to the Academy is considered one of the highest honors that can be accorded a scientist or engineer. The Academy is governed by a Council consisting of twelve members (councilors) and five officers, elected from among the Academy membership. Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone is the president of the National Academy of Sciences.”
Lovely and moving history lesson, Editor. Thank you. But of course it evaded my question (yet again).
First, my banana example blows this supposedly peer reviewed article sky high on a simple example. Your hero report says any level of radiation is dangerous (or alternatively, there is no safe level of radiation) whereas we know from common sense (and lots of peer reviewed studies if you wish to look) that various levels of radiation are in our normal, everyday (ie safe) environment and we can choose to expose ourselves knowingly to additional radiation by having Xrays, scans etc and perhaps unwittingly by eating a banana and sleeping next to someone. We know these examples are no big deal and, in fact, contribute to our healthy western longevity.
Second, you know we have an authoritative report from The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) which was set up by resolution of the United Nations General Assembly in 1955. It was established solely to “define precisely the present exposure of the population of the world to ionizing radiation.” Its report places the total confirmed deaths from radiation at 64 as of 2008. Estimates of the number of deaths potentially resulting from the accident vary enormously: the World Health Organization (WHO) suggest it could reach 4,000; a Greenpeace report puts this figure at 200,000 or more; a Russian publication, Chernobyl, concludes that 985,000 excess deaths occurred between 1986 and 2004 as a result of radioactive contamination.
So who is right? Lefties want to believe huge casualties and sensible people are more inclined to look at the “confirmed deaths” and ignore wild “estimates”. I’m sensible. I’ll believe 60-70. You can believe what you want. But one peer reviewed study does not necessarily trump another.
Many people recognise the conflict of interest inherant in the UN body – the IAEA – that produced the report that said there were only a handful of deaths from Chernobyl, since the second line in its charter is to promote the use of nuclear energy. It has often been accused of covering up the health risks of nuclear energy to promote the industry.
The IAEA mission statement (http://www.iaea.org/About/mission.html):
“The International Atomic Energy Agency:
* is an independent intergovernmental, science and technology-based organization, in the United Nations family, that serves as the global focal point for nuclear cooperation;
* assists its Member States, in the context of social and economic goals, in planning for and using nuclear science and technology for various peaceful purposes, including the generation of electricity, and facilitates the transfer of such technology and knowledge in a sustainable manner to developing Member States;
* develops nuclear safety standards and, based on these standards, promotes the achievement and maintenance of high levels of safety in applications of nuclear energy, as well as the protection of human health and the environment against ionizing radiation;
* verifies through its inspection system that States comply with their commitments, under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and other non-proliferation agreements, to use nuclear material and facilities only for peaceful purposes.”
Some scientists say that the 2011 Japanese nuclear accidents have revealed that the nuclear industry lacks sufficient oversight, leading to renewed calls to redefine the mandate of the IAEA so that it can better police nuclear power plants worldwide. There are several problems with the IAEA says Najmedin Meshkati of University of Southern California:
“It recommends safety standards, but member states are not required to comply; it promotes nuclear energy, but it also monitors nuclear use; it is the sole global organization overseeing the nuclear energy industry, yet it is also weighed down by checking compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).”
Russian nuclear accident specialist Iouli Andreev is critical of the response to Fukushima, and says that the IAEA did not learn from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. He has accused the IAEA and corporations of “wilfully ignoring lessons from the world’s worst nuclear accident 25 years ago to protect the industry’s expansion”.
It would seem to me that the “sensible” approach would be to keep an open mind, and certainly not to swallow the dubious official line wholesale. To perhaps look more closely at what unbiased scientists, such as the ones producing reports for the National Academy pf Sciences are saying, rather than dismissing them out of hand. The nuclear industry is a massive worldwide industry with a lot of money invested in its future viability, agencies promoting this industry have every reason to try to mitigate public concerns.
While you consider this, here are some images to help your cogitations:
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&biw=1920&bih=887&q=chernobyl%20victims&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi
I thank the Editor for another history lesson on a subject well off topic. Perhaps, dear Editor, you could confine your lessons to the UN agency I quoted (UNSCEAR) whch is not part of the UN agency you insist on lecturing me about (IAEA).
I didn’t follow your links noting they are off topic, but I presume the images one is heartrending. As usual, emotive images don’t make for good logical argument. People die everyday from natural, accidental and disease causes. Try convincing somone who makes important decisions by how they feel or how things seem rather than by conscientiously weighing the alternatives.
I ignored your reference to the flawed UNSCEAR report, because that report, alone among serious analyses Chernobyl, made no effort to assess the effects of widespread low-level radiation exposure.
Specifically, the report states:
“The Committee has decided not to use models to project absolute numbers of effects in populations exposed to low radiation doses from the Chernobyl accident, because of unacceptable uncertainties in the predictions.”
Interestingly, it’s not that UNSCEAR don’t think radiation causes cancer, they just say they can’t predict it — so that gave an estimate for deaths they could “reliably” predict. Therefore, as a comparison it is meaningless, since it is merely an audit.
Note the following recent article by Dr Peter Karamoskos, a nuclear radiologist and a public representative on the radiation health committee of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/dont-be-fooled-by-the-spin-radiation-is-bad-20110407-1d63z.html#ixzz1KPJSWHpX
“April 26 marks the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. The pro-nuclearists have gone into full-spin-ahead mode, misrepresenting the latest UNSCEAR (United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation) report on Chernobyl.
“Two days ago on this page, George Monbiot (”How the anti-nuclear lobby misled us all with dodgy claims”), citing the report, wrongly plays down he death toll. He correctly states that the report found 6848 cases of thyroid cancer in children, although he fails to acknowledge it was due to the effects of radioactive iodine in the nuclear fallout. The number of cases will continue to increase, according to the US National Cancer Institute, for a further 10 to 20 years.”
The long term effects of low dose radiation are widely accepted, even by the IAEA who included them in their 2008 Chernobyl forum report of 2008, which predicted 4,000 death from Chernobyl including the long term radiation effects.
As Dr Peter Karamoskos says:
“But more insidious and objectionable is the creeping misinformation that the nuclear industry has fed into the public sphere over the years. There seems to be a never-ending cabal of paid industry scientific ”consultants” who are more than willing to state the fringe view that low doses of ionising radiation do not cause cancer and, indeed, that low doses are actually good for you and lessen the incidence of cancer. Canadian Dr Doug Boreham has been on numerous sponsored tours of Australia by Toro Energy, a junior uranium explorer, expounding the view that “low-dose radiation is like getting a suntan”. Toro must have liked what it heard because it made him a safety consultant for the company in 2009.
“Ionising radiation is a known carcinogen. This is based on almost 100 years of cumulative research including 60 years of follow-up of the Japanese atom bomb survivors. The International Agency for Research in Cancer (IARC, linked to the World Health Organisation) classifies it as a Class 1 carcinogen, the highest classification indicative of certainty of its carcinogenic effects.
“In 2006, the US National Academy of Sciences released its Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation (VII) report, which focused on the health effects of radiation doses at below 100 millisieverts. This was a consensus review that assessed the world’s scientific literature on the subject at that time. It concluded: “. . . there is a linear dose-response relationship between exposure to ionising radiation and the development of solid cancers in humans. It is unlikely that there is a threshold below which cancers are not induced.”
“The most comprehensive study of nuclear workers by the IARC, involving 600,000 workers exposed to an average cumulative dose of 19mSv, showed a cancer risk consistent with that of the A-bomb survivors.”
We don’t know how many victims there will be from Chernobyl, but to rely on that figure from UNSCEAR is entirely misleading. It will be clearly many more than that; just how how many is subject to fierce debate.
So, Editor, now you are conflating ‘risk of cancer’ with ‘deaths from radiation’? Sort of like if you get some radiation from a nuclear reactor, you will get cancer and you will then die from cancer? And if anyone dies from cancer, a nuclear reactor caused it?
I agree that we know radiation can cause cancer. But people get cancer at a high level of incidence in the general population without any additionl exposure to radiation above natural levels. The UNSCEAR report you so want to bury simply states the obvious that sifting out cases of cancer caused by the higher than normal exposure to low radiation doses caused by Chernoyl from the many more cases occurring naturally is not scientific, “because of unacceptable uncertainties in the predictions”.
I see no problem with going with the science even if you say it’s an audit. Audits deal with facts. The studies you promote deal with unverified projections (guesses) and worst of all, emotion. The audit, as you call it, was completed decades after the accident so if it couldn’t find a good proportion of the millions of projected dead in that time, where are they? Still living and largely unaffected by their exposure?
We will be doomed to repeat at every nice round number anniversary of Chernobyl the left’s fantasy that this accident killed far more than it did so they can evade the obvious benefits of safe, clean nuclear generated electricity. In any case, we know coal kills in far greater numbers but everyone still uses it because, on balance, the benefits outweigh the costs.
Independent Australia would be well advised to publish articles putting a variety of viewpoints, not just the left’s. I nevertheless appreciate that debate is allowed to flow more freely these days on these pages.
RT @DrHCaldicott: Chernobyl cover-up: study shows more than a million deaths from radiation http://t.co/slVJkFa
RT @DrHCaldicott Chernobyl cover-up: study shows more than a million deaths from radiation http://t.co/slVJkFa IMHO nuclear power is insane
To address just a few points
This book was published by the New York Academy of Sciences, not the National Academy of Sciences. It was merely published by them, but not written, commisioned, reviewed or otherwise endorsed. In fact the description of the book on their website notes the following (and to finish the quote only partially presented by Dpb)
“The Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences issue “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment”, therefore, does not present new, unpublished work, nor is it a work commissioned by the New York Academy of Sciences. The expressed views of the authors, or by advocacy groups or individuals with specific opinions about the Annals Chernobyl volume, are their own. Although the New York Academy of Sciences believes it has a responsibility to provide open forums for discussion of scientific questions, the Academy has no intent to influence legislation by providing such forums. The Academy is committed to publishing content deemed scientifically valid by the general scientific community, from whom the Academy carefully monitors feedback.”
I.e. basically a disclaimer, letting people know that this book does not represent the views of the vast majority of radiation scientists. I.e. It’s just a book written by some avowed antis. Make of that what you will.
Secondly, is anybody really stupid enough to believe that it is possible to ‘cover up’ 1 million untimely deaths? I mean seriously! You can actually witness an increase of this many people dying within a limited subset – it would be impossible to cover up. If the all powerful nuclear industry (sneer) is in fact so powerful then why the hell did they not try and cover up the increased child thyroid cancer rates? Why? Because this increase was measured and remeasured by medical and scientific practitioners, linked to a clear causitive agent(namely the ingestion of radioactive iodine) and then eventually accepted and published by the UNSCEAR. You would have to be pretty viciosuly skeptical to beleive that UNSCEAR would connect these to the Chernobyl accident but somehow omit to mention those supposed 1 million other casualties.
Here’s an idea, maybe some of the people who died in that time frame did so from reasons other than radiation. Gosh-darn! If that were only possible…
Third, the effects of low level radiation have been pretty well studied and there has never been any convincing evidence to suggest increased cancer rates, and absolutely none to support increased rates of borth abnormalities in humans. Sure, the odd investigation here and there purports to show such a link, but then it turns out that they neglected to account for a whole bunch of factors (remeber all those other nasty carcinogens in our modern environment), and over time they invariably get shot down by the wider scientific community. And then of course you get the amazing inconsistency that people receiving even higher doses elsewhere do so without any apparent ill effects. For an example of the controversy surrounding such reports have a look into the controversy surrounding the Sellafield reprocessing childhood leukemia claims, though make sure to read past the original claims or else you’ll end up looking like a right ninny. For an example of people living with high levels of background radiation have a look at some of the studies of people living in parts of Southern England, Colarado and the Ramsar region in Iran.
If exposure to low doses was hazardous then we would indeed stop eating bananas, shutdown the aviation industry, prevent people from living at altitude, and revolutionise medical diagnostic imaging and certain forms of treatment to mention a few items – probably overnight.
To finish, this article is conspiracy mongering garbage. Worse, it is b.s. like this, if believed, which will actually affect the health of Fukushima residents more negatively than radiation as fear turns people to excessive drink, smoking and other poor lifestyle choices. You should consider this next time before publishing such rubbish.
People, today is the 25th Anniversary of the tragedy and ongoing legacy of Chernobyl. Please re-read Dr Brian Moench’s fine and courageous article published here in Independent Australia – and distribute it as widely as possible in the public interest and for discussion and debate.
Tess Lawrence.
Sorry Robert, you are right, it was the New York Acadmiy of Sciences that published the paper – an even older and more venerable institution:
“Founded in 1817, the New York Academy of Sciences (originally called the Lyceum of Natural History) has evolved from a notable institution in the greater New York area to one of the most significant organizations in the international scientific community. Since its beginnings, Academy membership has included prominent leaders in the sciences, business, academia and government, including Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Louis Pasteur, Charles Darwin, Margaret Mead, and Albert Einstein. In 2007, members included an unprecedented number of Nobel Laureates (23) on its advisory President’s Council alone) and other luminaries from all walks of life.
“Academy accomplishments include many historic “firsts,” such as publication of the first studies on environmental pollution (1876); the first conference on antibiotics (1946); a groundbreaking gathering on the cardiovascular effects of smoking (1960); and the world’s first major conferences on AIDS (1983) and SARS (2003). The Academy also held landmark conferences on the special challenges facing women in science (1998); music and neuroscience (2000); and a conference in China on the Frontiers of Biomedical Science (2005). NYAS members also played prominent roles in the establishment of New York University (1831) and the American Museum of Natural History (1858).
“In 2006, the Academy moved into a new home on the 40th floor of 7 World Trade Center, one of the world’s most technologically advanced “green” buildings in New York. With state-of-the-art meeting facilities, the 40,000-square-foot (3,700 m2) space better meets the needs of the Academy’s growing membership and expanding programs.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Academy_of_Sciences
Wow its rare to see the editor going to the ground with folks. Robert thank you, buy far you have been the most cogent and aware mind to post of yet. First, just because its written does not make it true. Generally peer reviewed, published works are as close to truth as we get. I understand that the book was written based off of peer reviewed papers. That does not mean much to be honest. Anyone can interpret those papers and write any opinion they choose. For you to believe what someone says because they base their opinion off of random peer reviewed facts is actually shameful in my opinion. You may say well if I cant do that then how am I to formulate any belief based off of fact. Well, a belief becomes more relevant as it begins to effect people directly and is affected by people indirectly. If you want to believe something that fits your world view fine, but you better be careful when you base a belief off of second hand knowledge of interpretation that actually doesn’t support the point you want it to one way or the other and then publish that belief. You have the right, but you will lose credibility among educated minds.
A point about the difference between these two academies. The national academy of science is actually for independent inspection of scientific inquiry. They filter their science through the NAS which employs the top scientists in the world to do their studies. The New York academy is older with many prominent members and many publications. Here within lay your issue. Just because it has those things does not make it a research think tank or independent like the National academy. Its like saying well all these prominent doctors are part of Mensa so Mensa is better than Stanford at dealing with medical reasoning. Its a logical flaw, you have confirmation bias and you need to be aware that your errors in judgment are actually effecting people.
Chernobyl cover-up: study shows more than a million deaths from radiation http://t.co/1aRLBf6J @independentaus